It’s A Democratic Gaming Landscape, Bitches

The BBC were in our office again today, but this time they had the courtesy to interview our own editor rather that Edge’s at our desks. It was for a segment on the 10 O’Clock News tonight about the launch of GTA IV, so naturally they wanted to talk to the editor of the only gaming magazine in the building whose platform it’s not coming out on.

Anyway, Craig found the clip online so you can actually see his poncy pontifications on the state of gaming today. Jump to the 26m50s mark for the goods:

Or a few minutes before that for the whole segment. They wanted Ross to say games were bigger than films these days, and rather admirably he declined to state anything he didn’t independently know to be true.

That claim was bandied about years before it was true by any meaningful metric, and even today it’s uselessly vague. A game costs eight times as much as a cinema ticket – are we really celebrating that the second biggest-selling game in years reached an eighth of the people that one not exactly world-shaking Hollywood flick did? Well done Bungie. Maybe one day you’ll make something as popular as The Hottie And The Nottie.

I know Games Journalism isn’t top notch (just look at all the 10/10 GTA4 reviews ;) ), but I must admit, the mainstream press have really not got the grasp of games yet. At least they are vaguely trying.

Also, odd how there is some censorship in the news broadcast. If it isn’t working too, you might want to try downloading the ASX file and loading it in windows media player (or possibly VLC).

The problem is that these stupid “bigger than the film industry” statistics only ever seem to take into account US box office receipts. As soon as you add in worldwide gross, then DVD sales, the licensing, then merchandising, then television rights, gaming is a meaningless blip in comparison.

I’m curious to see how long they actually interviewed Ross for – I mean, he only gets a few seconds on screen. The BBC interviewed me once for around half an hour, to cut it down to about ten seconds Â¬_Â¬.